On the Job: Meet Oculus' team builder

July 15, 2014

Updated 8:29 p.m.

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As Oculus' director of talent, Dolly Singh went on to hire the hardware and software whizzes that made the Irvine-based virtual reality company so irresistible that Facebook snapped it up for $2 billion. COURTESY OF DOLLY SINGH

As Oculus' director of talent, Dolly Singh went on to hire the hardware and software whizzes that made the Irvine-based virtual reality company so irresistible that Facebook snapped it up for $2 billion. COURTESY OF DOLLY SINGH

Dolly Singh says she might not be good at a lot of things, but she does one thing really well: build “kick-ass teams.”

The 35-year-old tech industry recruiter extraordinaire hooked up with Oculus VR a year ago when it was still a wet-behind-the-ears startup. As Oculus’ director of talent, she went on to hire the hardware and software whizzes that made the Irvine-based virtual reality company so irresistible that Facebook snapped it up for $2 billion.

Since March, when that deal was announced, Singh has continued recruiting a who’s who of virtual reality and game industry talent to the company from the likes of Microsoft, Google, Valve, EA and MIT Media Lab.

Before that, the Los Angeles resident and UCLA grad spent five years recruiting the rocket scientists – yes, she literally hired rocket scientists – for SpaceX and its notoriously particular co-founder, Elon Musk. Hawthorne-based SpaceX is the first private concern to successfully build, launch and retrieve a spacecraft.

Singh thinks of herself as a professional matchmaker. Social media such as LinkedIn and Web-based tools may have replaced the old methods recruiters used to identify and court the best prospects for their clients’ job openings. But the fundamentals are the same.

“It’s having a good ability to read people,” Singh explained in a phone interview.

Before Oculus and SpaceX became famous, filling jobs meant coaxing people to give the companies a try.

“There’s a period of time when you’re selling and trying to do the convincing, and that inevitably shifts, and people come to you,” she says.

In Oculus’ early days, a certain subset of job seekers wanted to work for the company specifically because it was an underdog, she says. Now it’s different. “If the company is doing something amazing, you’ll always have people who want to work there.”

Even when top people in their fields line up to work for you, though, getting them to commit isn’t easy. “When you’re dealing with the best of the best, they always have options. So even if they come to you, getting to that close (of a hiring deal) is a remarkably challenging thing to do,” she says.

These days, you don’t have to be the crème de la crème to get hired in what Singh describes as a “super-hot” tech industry job market. “The demand for recruiters is higher than I’ve ever seen it, and that’s usually a good leading indicator,” she says.

If you’re talented, you’re always going to have a job. The trick, she says, is choosing what opportunities to go after based on what you want. Some people want to get in on the ground floor of a fast-growth startup, get their equity and get out, moving every three years. Others value working for a company in an established industry with talented people.

“I try to coach candidates on making choices based on their values, because at the end of the day, that’s what gets you out of bed,” she says.

Silicon Valley might get more exposure, but Southern California’s tech scene has plenty of opportunities, she says. Facebook’s deal for Oculus and Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of headphones and streaming music company Beats Electronics refocused job hunters’ interest on opportunities at computer hardware makers. Los Angeles and Orange County are perfectly situated to capitalize on that.

“We have the aerospace business, a backbone of manufacturing know-how and expertise in terms of really smart electrical engineers, and mechanical (engineering) guys,” she says.

She predicts only good things for Oculus’ future. The company has pre-sold approximately 45,000 second-generation developer kits, which are expected to start shipping any day. Developers will use the kit’s VR headset, camera and related gear to develop games and other software for the consumer Oculus Rift headset, which company officials have said will be available by the end of 2015.

“Once you experience the product, you see how many markets it could impact,” she says. “It’s the like the reinvention of the World Wide Web. That’s pretty bad ass.”

To get there, Oculus has beefed up to approximately 100 employees, including seven Ph.Ds. The company has 45 job openings listed on its website, including jobs for electrical and software engineers, hardware technicians, industrial designers, 3D artists, Web developers, and human resource staff.

Being part of the team that built it “was very fortunate for me, and I did some good work for them. I feel like I’ve built some amazing companies,” she says.

Singh is a full-time contractor for Oculus and, if the Facebook acquisition closes as planned, she will leave when her contract expires at the end of the year. After that, she plans to return to building her own startup, a manufacturer of high-tech high heels that are as comfortable as they are glamorous.

It’s a venture that Singh was set to launch in 2013 but put on hold when Oculus’ founders persuaded her to join them.

Singh didn’t need to look far for inspiration for the company, called STHIRA, a Sanskrit word that means “steady” and also “strong-minded woman.” She loves fashion, shoes especially, and says she wore heels even when she walked job candidates through SpaceX’s 550,000-square-foot factory.

From Musk, she learned to think about fundamentals first, and that if you aren’t innovating, your competitors will leave you in the dust. The shoe industry may introduce new styles and colors with the seasons, but the way women’s shoes are constructed hasn’t changed – and that’s her opening.

“My friend Amanda, who’s my chief technology officer, made a joke that if men in New York City had to wear high heels, you’d have seen a whole lot of innovation,” she says. “We think we can and should do better. You’ll never make a high heel that feels like a sneaker, but can you do better than what’s on the market today.”

Singh has already used her recruiting skills to assemble an advisory team that includes a NASA astronaut, SpaceX co-founder, and noted Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon.

“It’s the most remarkable group of people thinking about high heels in the history of ever,” she says.

Michelle V. Rafter writes about jobs and employment issues. Send questions about job hunting, careers or workplace issues to her at moneymatters@ocregister.com or find her on Twitter @MichelleRafter.

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